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Accidents Vehicle Pedestrian Expert Witness

Expert Witness No.2731

Directed and supervised all technical and business activities of a broad-based transportation consultancy (Transportation Alternatives) serving municipalities, private contract operators, social service agencies, transit authorities and school districts. Concurrently, created and directed the operations of a transportation service company (PTS Transportation) and the U.S. distributor of a line of European-manufactured buses (TAM-USA). Provided expert witness services on more than 400 lawsuits.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

1979 – Present
TRANSPORTATION COMPANY
New York, New York
President
As its initial project, my transportation company directed the U.S. Department of Transportation’s first comprehensive study of demand-responsive transportation systems, resulting in USDOT’s publication of it’s three-volume manual on paratransit planning and system design.
It subsequently designed several of Southern California's most unique and sophisticated paratransit systems for elderly and disabled individuals, including the City of Los Angeles' initial VALTRANS program and multi-operator systems for Santa Monica, Pasadena and several social service agencies. It also designed a timed-transfer "pulse" transit system for a suburban community (Carson) and, almost a decade later, redesigned it to become the nation's only transit system directed primarily at the transportation of schoolchildren, integrating it with service to the general public and intersecting 13 municipal bus lines and passenger rail service. It also prepared five municipal transit plans, conducted a number of coordination and consolidation studies, and engaged in dozens of other planning and design projects for a range of public- and private-sector clients.
In 1982, it began serving as the technical consultant to a multi-provider paratransit brokerage system and, subsequently, a 70-vehicle paratransit operation and non-emergency medical transportation service (See PTS Transportation below).
Among it’s consulting efforts in the last decade:
• In 1995, my transportation company conducted a USAID-funded evaluation of Russian bus manufacturer Pavlovo Bus Factory (PAZ), examining its products, production facilities and export potential.
• As a subcontractor to Circadian Technologies, Inc., it conducted an FMCSA-funded examination of the duty cycles and operating environments of U.S. motorcoach services, including an identification of institutional, economic and operating factors which relate to driver fatigue and stress.
• With Dunlap & Associates and PTSI, it conducted two studies (loading/unloading and on-time reliability problems of special education students) for the District of Columbia Public Schools (under the Consent Decree of a class action lawsuit).
• As a subcontractor to Alberta-based AQL Consultants, it undertook an analysis of the City of Edmonton's Disabled Adults Transportation System, including an examination of DATS' custom-designed software and scheduling algorithms.
• Developed new system design parameters for the State of Rhode Island's statewide, consolidated paratransit system, and incorporated them into an RFP, grading scale and operating contract for the selection of vendors and the oversight of their contractual obligations.
• As a subcontractor to Team Inc., it helped develop technical specifications for a coordinated school/transit bus, and provided technical assistance about the operating and institutional barriers associated with its use, for an FTA-funded demonstration project.
• I conducted workshops, and made conference presentations, at national, state and Provincial conferences on an array of subjects including: Vehicle selection and specification; transit and school bus crossing safety; driver and attendant assignment and training; system monitoring and evaluation; management and operations; system design; software applications; transportation safety and liability; driver and motorist fatigue; and forensic analysis and expert witness services.
• As a Contributing Editor, I authored a multi-year series of monthly articles (most months from2007 to 20012) about crossing for School Transportation News, one of the schoolbus industry's primary two trade magazines (readership: 90,000).
• I authored dozens of papers on transit, paratransit, motorcoach and schoolbus operations and safety - including regular monthly columns in National Bus Trader since 2000, and eight papers published by the American Public Transportation Association in the Proceedings of many of APTA's annual Bus and Paratransit Conferences.
• Most recently, I was engaged as one of the initial instructors for the newly-formed Motorcoach Academy initiated as a joint venture between the United Motorcoach Association and the College of Southern Maryland.
Since 1989, I also served as an expert witness/consultant to attorneys and insurance companies in more than 400 accident- or incident-related law suits involving wrongful death, personal injury and class actions. In these efforts, I assisted attorneys and insurance carriers representing a range of public agencies, transit agencies, private contractors, school districts, labor unions, social service agencies, vehicle manufacturers, dealers, equipment manufacturers, bus drivers, and other individuals — serving both plaintiff's and defendants' council.

1982 – 1992
PTS TRANSPORTATION
Van Nuys, California
Chairman/General Manager
In 1982, I formed a transportation service company which was awarded a contract to design, and serve as the initial broker of, a multi-modal paratransit system transporting elderly and disabled residents of Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. PTS certified and transported 12,000 clients, selected subcontractors and directed their operating activities, designed "skeleton" routes and schedules, and monitored a $2M operating budget.
In 1983, PTS began the operation of its own paratransit system serving physically and developmentally disabled residents of the San Fernando Valley. This 15-vehicle system quickly grew into a 70-vehicle operation employing 125 individuals, providing 2,200 trips daily, and grossing $6M -- including our expansion of service into the Antelope Valley. In 1988, PTS began providing non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) service to hospitals and medical centers throughout Los Angeles County, beginning with seven additional vehicles and utilizing common "spares" from the existing San Fernando Valley fleet. Finally, PTS expanded to provide subcontract service to disabled clients of charter service and limousine companies, and corporate clients, as well as shuttle service to churches and other organizations on both regular and charter bases.

1989 - 1995
TAM-USA
Van Nuys, California
Chairman/Vice President
With initial support from Fortune 200 company Combustion Engineering (subsequently acquired by Asea Brown Boveri), Transportation Alternatives created a U.S.-Yugoslav joint venture company, TAM-USA, which (following Slovenia's independence) became the first U.S.-Slovene Joint Venture Company. Leveraging more than $8M in development capital from two Slovene partners and a loan from the Slovene government, TAM-USA became the North American distributor of all TAM truck and bus products. (Body maker AM-BUS joined the venture in 1990 as the third partner.)
As the minority partner, TA served officially as the technical and marketing consultant to TAM-USA. As TAM-USA's Chairman and Vice President, I formed a User Design Committee including representatives from USDOT, National Safety Council, umbrella organizations representing both school districts and private contractors, four State Directors of Pupil Transportation, several local school district directors, and the nation's five largest school bus contractors (Laidlaw, Ryder, Mayflower, VANCOM and Durham). Under my direction, the UDC provided comprehensive design input into the transformation of a European motorcoach vehicle envelope into a USDOT-certified school bus. Following Slovenia's independence, the collapse of our two major West Coast school bus competitors, and other difficult business challenges, we designed and introduced a single-rear-axle motorcoach into the U.S. market, and successfully sold a dozen of them in 1993 -- barely four years after the original joint venture was formed. In the beginning of 1994, we sold another 30 motorcoaches which were never delivered as a result of the liquidation of parent-companies TAM BUS and Avtomontaza by the Slovene government following the nation's transition to democracy.
Despite TAM-USA's short lifespan and limited commercial success, I succeeded in getting photographs on the cover of two issues of School Bus Fleet magazine, and an issue of National Bus Trader magazine, along with numerous articles, photographs and advertising in School Bus Fleet, School Transportation News, National Bus Trader and Bus Ride. A lengthy article about the TAM-USA project, focusing on its transition from the school bus to motorcoach market, was published in East European Investment magazine (September, 1993). I directed all TAM-USA advertising and public relations activities, include the design of all advertising copy.
As a result of these activities, TAM-USA began exporting U.S. and Canadian automotive components to TAM BUS for inclusion in vehicles designed and exported for Western European, Eastern European and North African markets. The TAM-USA effort was also responsible for helping to introduce a number of automotive components from a number of major U.S. companies -- including Rockwell and Cummins - into the bus markets in Russia, Israel, Croatia and Slovenia.

1978 - 1979
SMITH & HOWARD ASSOCIATES
Washington, D.C.
Senior Planner
I prepared the summary of the National Survey of the Transportation Handicapped submitted to Congress — which, years later, formed one of the bases for the transportation sections of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). I conducted a comprehensive survey of the impacts of the Federally-required "half fare provision" for elderly and disabled riders on transit ridership and revenue. And I served as the principal investigator and author of a USDOT-funded study of barriers to the diffusion of innovation in the transit industry.

1976, 1977
PUBLIC TECHNOLOGY, INC
Washington, D.C.
Project Manager
I supervised a staff of eight planners, helped coordinate activities for the Urban Consortium of Technology Initiatives (members included U.S. cities with populations over 500,000), and edited technical documents prepared for a number of studies funded by the USDOT's Office of the Secretary and its Urban Mass Transportation Administration (currently the Federal Transit Administration). I also designed, and served as Project Manager and Acting Director for, the USDOT/APTA-sponsored National Conference on Transit Performance (September, 1977).

1975, 1976
LINTON & COMPANY
Washington, D.C.
Planning Associate
I helped prepare a Unified Work Program outlining the planning and programming activities conducted by the Illinois Department of Transportation.